A North Korean mis­sile ex­ploded after lift-off

SEOUL: An ex­plo­sion al­most im­me­di­ately after launch was be­hind the fail­ure of North Korea’s lat­est test-fir­ing of a pow­er­ful medium-range mis­sile, the South Korean mil­i­tary con­firmed yes­ter­day. North Korea tested a Musu­dan mis­sile-ca­pa­ble of hit­ting US bases as far away as Guam-shortly after mid­day Satur­day near an air base in the north­west­ern city of Ku­song. Such launches are usu­ally re­ported within a few hours or even min­utes by South Korean and US mil­i­tary mon­i­tors, but the news of Satur­day’s test only came out around 16 hours after the event. “North Korea’s mis­sile launch failed shortly after lift-off so a con­sid­er­able amount of time was needed to an­a­lyze it,” a South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff of­fi­cial told re­porters yes­ter­day.